


Dark As The Tomb Where It Happens

by SearchingforSerendipity



Series: The Second Life and Opinions of Aaron Burr Jr., Ex-Esquire [2]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Easter, Gen, between chapter 1 and 2 of if there's a reason I'm alive, orphanhood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 08:16:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6366487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>He clears his throat with a faint chuckle. "I used to come here when I was younger. Do you know?  I never felt your presence in my life as strongly as in those years. It was suffocating."<em></em></em>
</p><p>  </p><p>Easter Day of 1774 <em>(again)<em></em></em>.  Aaron Burr, resurrected,  misses mass to visit his father's gravestone in the search of answers and purpose. He finds one out of two.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dark As The Tomb Where It Happens

It is a rainy Easter, the sort that sent raindrops pattering against the stained glass, a muted counterpoint to the choir. It falls is great diagonal curtains, wetting his clothes from every single angle and dripping unpleasantly down his shaved scalp. Not for the first time in this lifetime, Aaron Burr misses his trusty umbrella.

The flowers too are sopped through. The water turned the white petals a veiny translucent, clogging the air with the perfume from the pink dahlias and the jasmine. Stray flowers, from fields or bought cheaply from gardens, nothing to the big flower stalls he'd seen in Europe, weighted down with bouquets wrapped in bows around neatly clipped steams. 

"I meant to bring some dandelions, but Demeter ate them. They were only weeds, in any case."

From inside the white washed church comes the sound of young untuned voices rising in prayer. The student body had been herded out of their bed early this Sunday to get properly dressed for mass, and Burr has no doubt that the many upturned faces staring at the priest's back are daydreaming of the lamb and potatoes meal soon to come. He knew that because that was what he had done before, a lifetime away.

"You might have liked Demeter. I was not sure she would live, but she has managed to put on weight and she is certainly spirited. I think she'll serve me well. Soon she'll be grown enough for riding." Not yet, though. After the rainfalls had ceased, when the stepping was surer and the days longer.

He ought to take Madison with him. Demeter liked him well enough, and it would do him good, he spent far too much time studying and the other scant minutes worrying about studying. Burr, who had turned memorizing facts for a trial into an art form, watched all this and helped where he could.

The way the other students listened to him was a surprise, though it made a certain sense. He meant to keep his accomplishments to a minimum this time, all the better to be unremarkable, but there was no reason why he should not share some knowledge. And he did enjoy it, oddly enough. Theodosia made the most studious of boys seem daft, but he had never considered he might find his daughter's like.

"Did you enjoy riding, Father? No one ever spoke of it."

The gravestone did not answer. Burr hunches deeper into his jacket, and the granite is cold on his fingers when he brushes water away from the engravings. His father's name, birth and death dates, some words in Latin about his accomplishments. The second principal of Princeton, a respected member of the community, pious, intelligent, hardworking ( _he worked his way into the grave_ , he remembers his uncle saying, when he'd had one too many drinks, _poor bastard. never knew when to stop, never knew how to live_ )

A man any boy would be proud to call father. It had been a cold comfort, as a young orphan. It was colder still now, young again, lingering in the graveyard instead of retreating to the warm candles-and-myrrh warmth of the church

It is Easter Day, when the son of the Lord returned to the living, and Aaron Burr is frozen all over.

"Are you proud of me, Father?", he asks the stone. "Are you proud of the men I am, the boy I was? Do you grieve for me, or curse my name?"

A pointless question. The bones rooting beneath the stone would not answer. Any hopes Burr had of ever meeting his father had been dashed with his return to life. He wondered, idly, if he would ever manage to die properly. Would he awake again and again, forever caught in a chase of his won regrets. He dearly hoped not. If it was punishment, it was deserved but unwanted; if it was a blessing to was a crude and cruel one.

"I am ashamed of myself." he confesses the stone, voice catching in the words and ending in a cough. His nose is wet , his skin chilled and hot by turns. He'd caught a fever some days ago, as one is wont to when sharing a dorm with boys, and it makes him sway on his feet. "For killing Hamilton. For not being a good enough husband and father and person. Father, forgive me. I am not a good man."

He clears his throat with a faint chuckle. "I used to come here when I was younger. Do you know? Do you see the immensity of worlds from some afterlife, every what if? Maybe you do. But I did use to come here. I never felt your presence in my life as strongly as in those years. It was suffocating. Would I rise too fast, fall too deeply, destroy any hope of maintaining your legacy? What legacy would you want, were you alive? Who were you when you were alive? Why am I alive in your place?"

He stops, gasping. Damn the chill and damn the sickness. The rain is still falling, turning the ground into slippery mud. The smell of growing bushes and wet soil goes to his head, makes him sneeze and wonder how many centuries would have to pass until this graveyard __turned into a wild garden, a forest, a forgotten corner of the world, just one more old resting place for ivy-covered names between the trees. It seemed wretchedly unfair, that Aaron Senior had the luxury of oblivion, while his son had to trudge the Earth long after he ought to have left it.

The clouds part, just for a few moments, casting a sheer curtain of light of the sky. The fat droplets clinging to the grass shimmer strangely, gravestone elongating in sudden relief.

"Is this God's plan?" he asks, sadder, less bitter. Leaning back on his heels he breathes deeply, feels the thin tendrils of light touching lightly at his fevered brow. "I do not believe in a god anymore. I was sure in my doubt, you know? I had found peace in not believing. "

His lips twitch, stiff. "Now here I stand, Father. The son dead and came again, like your beloved scripture said. What would Grandfather have to say on this?"

Then he laughs, because while he has never met either men he knows enough of this one to know this. "He'd call me a demon and a Beelzebub and witch, and no doubt tie me to a stake and burn me. Quite unfair. No one tried to burn Jesus when he returned to life." When Jesus of Nazareth returned to chest he found loved ones grieving for him, followers and faithfuls and friends. The Son of Man and The Son of God had sacrificed himself for humanity.

Burr? Burr had died of old age, a sinner through and through. Not alone, but not with family. When he returned to life, there had been no one to greet him kindly.

He falls silent. His bones ache with phantom age, wariness not of the body clinging to his water-heavy clothes, pulling him down into an unfamiliar slouch. His father's last resting place remains as solid and silent as it had ever been. He feels very old, and very cold, and very alone.

The rain has eased somewhat, and from the thin walls the priest's words come through: "Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Some more warbled lines, and then the collective amen rises like a tide, briefly drowning out the rain.

Alone in a sea of graves, Burr mumbles his own devotion.

The great oak door open. The congregation make their way outside, with crawling speed. Piety is ever more desirable when it is comfortable. Gossipy matrons confer in bands, gentlemen on shiny boots compliment the priest on his sermon. Eventually ladies brave the rain under umbrellas held by brothers or beaus, servants run to fetch carriages and students lift their hats over their heads, some dashing off on a run to find lunch.

He is not invisible, as much as he had wished it once and needed it now. From the distance he can see a professor squinting at him, likely wondering who the unruly student was. From the rush of black-clad students he spies a profile like Madison's sneezing, looking around.

"Well, Father. It was good talking to you." Suddenly awkward, he bends down, finding a spot to lay down the bouquet without covering the world's with the ease of long practice. They are sopped through, but there's no helping that.

"Blessed Easter, sir."

He looks back at the grave once, twice, because he's not a child anymore and so his pride is not so prickly to be wounded by this one concession. He winds through the trail of tombs, stepping on weeds and snails as he went. Madison catches up with him, drawn and still too pale from the latest bout of sickness, already asking for clarification if some ancient philosopher. Soon other boys find them, asking own their questions. Burr paces them through the subject, leading the growing procession. It's only when they are back under the roof of Princeton that he notices it has stopped raining.

**Author's Note:**

> Because I had to write this when I found out Aaron Burr Sr. is buried in Princeton.


End file.
